Stock image for illustration purposes only - book cover, edition or condition may vary.
Brutes in Suits: Male Sensibility in America, 1890–1920
John Pettegrew
€ 53.75
FREE Delivery in Ireland
Description for Brutes in Suits: Male Sensibility in America, 1890–1920
Paperback. This timely assessment of the evolution of masculine culture will be welcomed and debated by social and intellectual historians for years to come. Series: Gender Relations in the American Experience. Num Pages: 424 pages, 24, 24 black & white halftones. BIC Classification: 1KBB; HBJK; JFFP; JFSJ2. Category: (P) Professional & Vocational. Dimension: 235 x 157 x 27. Weight in Grams: 616.
Are men truly predisposed to violence and aggression? Is it the biological fate of males to struggle for domination over women and vie against one another endlessly? These and related queries have long vexed philosophers, social scientists, and other students of human behavior. In Brutes in Suits, historian John Pettegrew examines theoretical writings and cultural traditions in the United States to find that, Darwinian arguments to the contrary, masculine aggression can be interpreted as a modern strategy for taking power. Drawing ideas from varied and at times seemingly contradictory sources, Pettegrew argues that traditionally held beliefs about masculinity developed largely through language and cultural habit-and that these same tools can be employed to break through the myth that brutishness is an inherently male trait. A major re-synthesis of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century manhood, Brutes in Suits develops ambitious lines of research into the social science of sexual difference and professional history's celebration of rugged individualism; the hunting-and-killing genre of popular men's literature; that master text of hypermasculinity: college football; military culture, war making, and finding pleasure in killing; and patriarchy, sexual jealousy, and the law. This timely assessment of the evolution of masculine culture will be welcomed and debated by social and intellectual historians for years to come.
Product Details
Format
Paperback
Publication date
2012
Publisher
Johns Hopkins University Press United States
Number of pages
424
Condition
New
Series
Gender Relations in the American Experience
Number of Pages
424
Place of Publication
Baltimore, MD, United States
ISBN
9781421407647
SKU
V9781421407647
Shipping Time
Usually ships in 7 to 11 working days
Ref
99-1
About John Pettegrew
John Pettegrew is an associate professor of history and director of the American Studies Program at Lehigh University and coeditor of the three-volume Public Women, Public Words: A Documentary History of American Feminism.
Reviews for Brutes in Suits: Male Sensibility in America, 1890–1920
Pettegrew... casts a challenge against conventionally accepted Darwinian notions of brutishness as an essential and natural male trait. He argues that male dominance and aggression are not predestined by instinct, but culturally and ideologically constructed, desired, and performed through time... This book contributes to intellectual and cultural history on gender and manhood. Choice Pettegrew's book remains rigorous and passionate in its narration of the historic appeal as well as the immediate dangers of de-evolutionary masculinity.
Jennifer Travis American Historical Review Ambitious study... valuable in exploring the vast cultural production of masculine instinct as a fact of life.
Woody Register Labor History To Pettegrew's great credit, his study looks both forward and back: at the way masculinity was naturalized as aggressive in turn-of-the-century society; and, perhaps more importantly, at the extent to which modern-day historians, scientists, and ordinary citizens deploy discourses of evolutionary psychology, sociobiology, and psychology in a misplaced effort to read gender as the offspring of biology and society.
Martin A. Berger Journal of American History Will be of interest to scholars of cultures of violence and middle-American masculinity. He offers a solid history of the naturalizing revelry of men in the violence they do.
Neal King American Journal of Sociology It will spark debate within the field for its bold explanation of why modern men feel as though violence is both their burden and right.
Ryan Anderson H-SHGAPE, H-Net Reviews [A] vivid, massively researched history of 'hyper-masculine' sensibility at the turn of the twentieth century... An instructive and provocative view of men's dark side.
Peter Filene Men and Masculinities This fascinating and ambitious study explores how an aggressive 'de-evolutionary' model of masculinity was woven into a broad range of American institutions... Pettegrew brings together feminist theory, 'an anthropological ironist perspective' and a wealth of gender studies scholarship to investigate the development of a pervasive mindset of brutish masculinity within a rich selection of archival and popular cultural materials... This well-researched and engaging volume will certainly enrich the ever-growing field of men's studies.
Christina Jarvis Gender and History
Jennifer Travis American Historical Review Ambitious study... valuable in exploring the vast cultural production of masculine instinct as a fact of life.
Woody Register Labor History To Pettegrew's great credit, his study looks both forward and back: at the way masculinity was naturalized as aggressive in turn-of-the-century society; and, perhaps more importantly, at the extent to which modern-day historians, scientists, and ordinary citizens deploy discourses of evolutionary psychology, sociobiology, and psychology in a misplaced effort to read gender as the offspring of biology and society.
Martin A. Berger Journal of American History Will be of interest to scholars of cultures of violence and middle-American masculinity. He offers a solid history of the naturalizing revelry of men in the violence they do.
Neal King American Journal of Sociology It will spark debate within the field for its bold explanation of why modern men feel as though violence is both their burden and right.
Ryan Anderson H-SHGAPE, H-Net Reviews [A] vivid, massively researched history of 'hyper-masculine' sensibility at the turn of the twentieth century... An instructive and provocative view of men's dark side.
Peter Filene Men and Masculinities This fascinating and ambitious study explores how an aggressive 'de-evolutionary' model of masculinity was woven into a broad range of American institutions... Pettegrew brings together feminist theory, 'an anthropological ironist perspective' and a wealth of gender studies scholarship to investigate the development of a pervasive mindset of brutish masculinity within a rich selection of archival and popular cultural materials... This well-researched and engaging volume will certainly enrich the ever-growing field of men's studies.
Christina Jarvis Gender and History